Pet Shock Boys... we might have been called Shampooch
Pop duo reveal their close shave
THEY may be our most successful ever music duo but, in another life, the Pet Shop Boys could have been a one-hit wonder in France with an even dafter name.
After a chance meeting in a music shop in 1981, Neil Tennant and Chris Lowe bonded over their mutual love of disco and electronica.
They made demos together using the name West End before taking inspiration via some pals and changing their name – narrowly sidestepping greater silliness.
Chris says: “I was staying with some friends in Ealing [West London] and they had friends who worked in, it wasn’t a pet shop, it was a poodle parlour.
“As if our name was not bad enough it was called Shampooch.”
Neil says: “The pet shop was upstairs and was Shampooch in the basement? We could have been called Shampooch!”
After deciding on Pet Shop Boys, their friends’ nickname for their poodle-pampering pals, the pair had a few false starts that might have derailed the careers of lesser acts.
In a new BBC documentary called Imagine... Pet Shop Boys: Then And Now, Neil recalls travelling to New York while a journalist at Smash Hits magazine and using the trip to sound out US producer Bobby Orlando.
He then plays the demo track of West End Girls – the single that would later be their big 1985 UK hit.
“We’d come to make a Bobby O high energy record and we suddenly made this moody rap record,” says Neil.
“It’s a minor hit in France at number 27 and then Epic Records decided not to sign a second single by us, so in fact it’s over.” But they were not going to give up that easily despite being dropped by them.
“I said to Chris, I think we should ask Tom Watkins to manage us. And Tom is a big guy with a big voice and, cut a long story short, he persuades the Parlophone label to sign us and I’d said to Tom, ‘I can’t leave Smash Hits till I get the same salary.
“And that means Chris has got to get that salary too’. So yeah, we both paid £12,000 a year in 1984.” Even then they released another flop single Opportunities which reached the dizzy heights of number 116.
But thankfully someone had the foresight to re-record West End Girls.
Neil says: “Things are looking shaky, very shaky. Of course we’ve had to buy out Bobby O, EMI have had to pay Bobby a million dollars and we’re earning £12,000 pounds a year.
“So we’ve got what the music business calls a huge debit balance.
“And so we remake West End Girls and it sounds great.” Other big hits followed in the 1980s including Always On My Mind and It’s A Sin, while Being Boring and Go West were memorable 90s successes.
And even after all these years, the pair seem perfectly in sync.
Neil says: “We are a bit like two halves of one brain because we have different instincts. Chris is more about feeling, I am more about the rationale of it.
“I am quite good at organising the finishing of the product, whereas Chris is much more interested in the creation of it.”
The pair show no signs of slowing down and have a new album, Nonegot theless, out at the end of the month and tour dates in the UK and Europe.
Neil, 69, says: “I’m sure people must think when you’ve been going on for a long time, you must get tired and just be repeating yourself or going through the motions.
“The thing about us is that’s not true. It’s the making and the creating of it that’s the inspiring thing.”
Chris, 64, adds: “Writing new stuff and doing new projects and everything is really what I live for.”
Pet Shop Boys: Then and Now is on BBC1 on Tuesday April 16 at 10.40pm. The album Nonetheless is out on April 26.
We suddenly made this moody rap record. It’s a minor hit in France
NEIL TENNANT ON THEIR FAILED AMERICAN LINK-UP Writing new stuff and doing new projects and everything is really what I live for
CHRIS LOWE ON HOW THE BAND HAS MAINTAINED THEIR PASSION